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Stellaris Dev Diary #16 - Colony Events

Events in Stellaris will not be limited to the Anomalies you find in space. Another event category that you will encounter as you play the game are colony events. Fairly self-explanatory, colony events are events that can trigger on your colonies. Our goal with these events is to provide a bit of identity to the planets you colonize, and set them further apart.

Some events will have situations that you can respond to in a number of ways, and in many cases you will have to deal with the fallout (positive or negative) of your choices in follow-up events that can fire many years later.

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Minutes from the Board of Inquiry into the loss of colony NSD-578 (New Albion)
2279.244, 14:01 hours local station time


GIDDINGS, AMANDA (Advocate General, ISFA)
State your name for the record, please.

BORLAND, S. ERIC (PN-2344-D-1)
Eric Borland.

GIDDINGS
You served as the planetary governor of NSD-578, otherwise known as ‘New Albion’ to its inhabitants, for a period of seven years. Is this correct?

BORLAND
It is.

GIDDINGS
As I’m sure you’re aware, all contact was lost with New Albion four months ago, less than a year after your governorship ended. The relief expedition, led by the cruiser Vikramaditya, found no trace of the colonists.

BORLAND
I am aware of this, yes.

SWEENEY, LEONARD (Senior Representative, RCC)
We were hoping that you would be able to shed some light on what happened, Mr. Borland. The disappearance of an entire colony with over 100,000 inhabitants is a source of… some concern to us, as I’m sure you understand.

BORLAND
As I’ve said at all the other hearings you’ve put me through, these are things that can happen when you colonize a new planet. How many times do you want me to say this? There are always risks involved, especially when a colony is young!

ISHIKAWA, MIYU (Junior Commissioner, GTSA)
Would you care to elaborate?

BORLAND
It’s very simple. We are dealing with planets that are completely alien. Their ecosystems are still being mapped, and in many cases the planets in question have been visited, or even inhabited, by other spacefaring cultures.

ISHIKAWA
I’m not sure I see how this pertains to the situ-

BORLAND
The orbital surveys our Science Ships perform only reveal the tip of the iceberg. Once your colony starts growing, and you have thousands of colonists running around in the wild building settlements, you will sometimes run into things that weren’t in the survey reports. Look at what happened on Las Veredas, for example.

SWEENEY
I’m not quite up to speed on events from that sector. What exactly happened there?

HAGNER, L. TIMOTHY (Senior Investigator, BRSF)
I believe they found an old drone on the surface.

BORLAND
Not just one - there was a whole fleet. The drones evidently thought our colony belonged to whoever had originally built them, as they began to sporadically assist our colonists by gathering minerals and terraforming uninhabitable sections of the surface.

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SWEENEY
But it sounds like that had a positive effect on the development of the Las Veredas colony. What happened on New Albion is quite the opposite.

BORLAND
Of course it is, you pompous fool! We’re dealing with the unknown here! Our colonists will sometimes find that the planet they settled is even more valuable than the initial survey indicated, like when prospectors on Acrisia unearthed an intact battleship.

HAGNER
Really now, Mr. Borland, you need to -

BORLAND
Other times, the outcome can be disastrous, like when the colonists of Xianyang activated that ancient abandoned terraforming equipment, only to discover that the aliens who built it breathed ammonia!

GIDDINGS
Sit down, Mr. Borland! Sit down, or I will have security restrain you -

BORLAND
So what do I think happened on New Albion? I haven’t the slightest idea! Maybe the colonists were enslaved and brought underground by some kind of subterranean civilization. Maybe they were all consumed by a type of predator that hadn’t been encountered before! All I know is that while you’re sitting here safe and sound on your fat asses in low Earth orbit, there are… no, get your hands off me! Let me finish! There are colonists out there who -

GIDDINGS
Remove Mr. Borland from the room! The rest of us will reconvene in ten minutes.

BORLAND
<unintelligible shouting>

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Next week Game Director Henrik "Doomdark" Fåhraeus will tell to you about War, Peace, Influence and Claims!

Because of reasons, the "War, Peace, Influence and Claims!" Dev Diary has been postponed. The next Dev Diary will be about the ship designer instead. - BjornB
 
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Are these colony events/decisions things that need to be done "now or never"? Like the underground vault, for example, do we have to decide immediately and irrevocably, or can we say "let's wait until our colony is more established before opening that" ?
 
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I like the idea of delayed outcomes from events. Should discourage save-scumming.

"Hey, we opened the vault and everyone got a money boost from selling all the neat stuff inside"

20 years later: "Remember the stuff we took out of that vault we opened? Well, I've got bad news...."
 
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I know we can play aquatic species. Will we be able to play subterranean species?

For that matter, could a air breathing, surface species learn to build underground and under water cities? That could mean an enormous number of possible cities.
 
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Are these colony events/decisions things that need to be done "now or never"? Like the underground vault, for example, do we have to decide immediately and irrevocably, or can we say "let's wait until our colony is more established before opening that" ?

In the case of the underground vault, you will get a Special Project to open it which you can complete whenever you want. Of course, other events can lead to Special Projects that are timed. If you don't finish them on time, there may be consequences...
 
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This means the means of declaring war right?

I can't imagine there's a dejure claims in this, except maybe on planets in the same system as your colonies (but even then I can imagine there being prerequisites to just war decing), planets or systems of religious importance, and systems in between your colonies if you use hyper lanes.
 
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There's clearly a cover up here. Why else would they restrain Mr. Borland just as he's about to say something revealing?
 
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The pictures accompanying those events are beautiful, I especially like the one on the first screenshot. Seriously, the degree of details you put into this game is amazing.
 
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Will you ever let us know how far development is actually coming along? We aren't gunna go up in arms if something knocks it off track based on what you tell us.
 
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This means the means of declaring war right?

I can't imagine there's a dejure claims in this, except maybe on planets in the same system as your colonies (but even then I can imagine there being prerequisites to just war decing), planets or systems of religious importance, and systems in between your colonies if you use hyper lanes.


I'm thinking that "claims" in Stellaris may be in the Old West frontier style, where you can lay claim to a sector of space before fully exploring/colonising it - which may lead to friction with other civilisations who already live there, or have claimed the same region.
 
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This means the means of declaring war right?

I can't imagine there's a dejure claims in this, except maybe on planets in the same system as your colonies (but even then I can imagine there being prerequisites to just war decing), planets or systems of religious importance, and systems in between your colonies if you use hyper lanes.


They've stated previously that influence points are needed to "claim" systems for your empire. So....something to do with that most likely.

R.I.P Herr Bowie
 
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